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One of my strongest philosophies of education is the importance of installing the love of becoming a life -long reader. With this statement in mind, my homework policy reflects the need for children to read material that they have selected. Every evening students are required to read for 30 minutes and then to respond briefly in print onto a Reading Log that is turned in every Friday. This log requires a parent/guardian signature so that the school/home connection demonstrates to the student the importance of reading. On Thursday evening, the student is required to write a
paragraph that summarizes the content/material read for the week. This is purposefully required so that the act of responding to reading in print becomes a skill that is continuously worked on. I believe that by having the students write 3 sentences on Monday, and then 2 sentences on Tuesday, it will help facilitate the organizational skills for the paragraph writing on Thursday. I keep a weekly account of the total number of individual pages read and this figure is then totaled for the entire class. We have set a challenge for ourselves and we are going to try to read the total number of miles that is the circumference of the equator of the Earth. (24,901.55) Words of advise, the competitive nature of children can sometimes lead to the misreporting of pages read. As the mother of four, I pick up on these inaccuracies quite quickly and will notice when "Johnny" states that he has read 535 pages in 30 minutes from a book titled, How to Fool Your Teacher in Three
Pages or Less. Again I ask that you verify these pages before signing the reading log, as it is another way to reinforce the home/school connection. Also know that I am well aware that just as some children run faster than other children, some children read faster than other children. These natural differences in children is handled with respect and no student in my room is identified by the individual number of pages read.
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